Online Working and Non-Verbal Communication

       Online Working and Non-Verbal Communication

I Lead-in.

A.   Take 1 minute to think about your associations with the phrase ‘body language’ and write down your ideas.

B.   Compare your lists of associations with other students. What similarities and differences do you have?

C.   What role does body language play at work? What body language (gestures, posture, etc.) do you expect a boss or a leader to have? 

 

II Vocabulary focus. Match the words to their definitions. Use three words in your sentences.

1.	redundant	A.	looking like gloomy and pessimistic scenes or figures in the paintings of L.S. Lowry
2.	emergent	B.	relating to people who work in offices
3.	to furrow	C.	to give characteristic to someone
4.	to infuse	D.	showing no interest or emotion in eyes
5.	to gaze	E.	the way someone holds their shoulders, neck, and back
6.	to foster	F.	a part played by a person in bringing about a result
7.	to confer	G.	to fill someone with emotion
8.	bigwig	H.	to appear as a large and frightening shape
9.	contribution	I.	carefully organized (scene)
10.	obvious	J.	the level at which something starts to happen
11.	incredulity	K.	to form a wrinkle on a brow because the person is angry, unhappy, or confused
12.	white-collar	L.	to encourage the development of feelings
13.	threshold	M.	to look at something or someone for a long time
14.	glassy-eyed	N.	to be successful
15.	Lowry-like	O.	easy to understand
16.	to loom	P.	an important person
17.	set-piece	Q.	no longer needed or useful
18.	to  pay off	R.	the state of being unable to believe something
19.	posture	S.	coming into view

 

 

 III Vocabulary focus. Follow the link below.  Study the words and word combinations using flashcards, check your understanding, and practise spelling the new words. Take a test and check your knowledge. Play matching vocabulary game (match words to their definitions to make cards disappear) and the play a game (save the planet from asteroids by typing in correct words).

 

 

IV Look through the article. Seven sentences have been removed. Read the article and choose from the sentences (A-J) the one which fits each gap (1-7). There are   sentence fragments that you do not need to use.

 

 

A.    If your camera is in the wrong place, you may think you are looking meaningfully at your team but you are actually just giving them a view of your nostrils.

B.    A second problem is that people look for different things from their bosses.

C.   Even when workers gradually return to their offices, some employees will keep working remotely for at least part of the week.

D.   There’s a common perception that people who touch their faces when answering questions are signalling deception.

E.    To get the fastest relief from even mildly stressful situations, we touch our faces (chin, lips, cheek, nose, forehead) where a calming effect is most easily accessed.

F.    And although faces fill the videoconferencing screen, meaningful eye contact is impossible.

G.   But posture is not leadership.

H.   And body language is an essential part of communication.

I.      They nod; they touch others but not themselves; they gesture; they furrow their brows; they hold themselves erect; their facial expressions are more animated.

J.     It’s a posture I’ve seen employees display as they interact with their boss.

 

Communication is an essential part of leadership. 1) __________. There is a mini-industry of research and advice into how executives can influence and encourage without needing to say a word. The pandemic has made much of it redundant.

Plenty of studies have looked into the nonverbal behaviour that marks out “emergent leaders”, people who do not have a specified role in the hierarchy but naturally assume a position of authority in groups. 2) __________. Other research suggests that, to win votes in an election, candidates should deliver speeches with their feet planted apart. The second-most popular TED talk claims that two minutes of private, hands-on-hips “power posing” can infuse a job candidate with confidence and improve others’ perceptions of them.

Gazing can foster a sense of psychological safety as well as confer authority: in a recent paper, researchers from Harvard Business School found that receiving more eye contact from a bigwig led to greater participation in group interactions. Leaders who adopt open body positions, with arms and legs uncrossed, are also more likely to encourage contributions.

There are three problems with this body of research on nonverbal communication. One is that so much of it is obvious. Nodding at someone rather than shaking your head in incredulity when they are speaking to you — this does indeed send a powerful signal. 

3) __________. Frowning is seen as a mark of emergent leaders but not of supportive ones; the reverse is true of smiling. A recent paper found that male recipients regarded bosses who used emojis, a form of not-quite-verbal communication, in an email as more effective, but that female recipients perceived them as less effective.

The third problem is newer. Almost all of the research on body language dates from a time of in-person interactions. 4) __________. Zoom will remain integral to white-collar working lives. And if there is one thing for which online interactions are not suited, it is body language.

That is partly because bodies themselves are largely hidden from view: whatever language they are speaking, it is hard to hear them. You will know the partners, pets and home-décor choices of new colleagues before you will know how tall they are. 5) __________.

Once past a basic threshold of attentiveness — for example, not looking down at your mobile phone — most people have the same glassy-eyed stare. If several faces appear on screen, these participants have no way of knowing that you are gazing specifically at them. 6) __________. Animated expressions are hard to spot, particularly when people attending hybrid meetings in the office are Lowry-like figures seated metres away.

There are no good ways to compensate for these problems. One tactic is to go all in on expressiveness, nodding furiously and gesturing madly — a small tile of locked energy somewhere in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. Another is to do a “Zoom loom”, placing yourself so close to the camera that you will give everyone nightmares.

The simpler option is not to think too hard about body language. At a few specific moments, like job interviews and set-piece speeches, first impressions matter and a bit of self-conscious posing pays off. 7) __________. If you want to give people a break from staring at a screen, turning off your camera is a good way to do it. 

 

V Comprehension check. Mark the sentences as True (T) or False (F). Correct the false statements.

 

1.    Leadership potential is essential for effective communication.  

2.    Leaders can influence and encourage employees using body language.  

3.    “Emergent leaders” are company bosses and top managers.  

4.    “Emergent leaders” tend to have more animated facial expressions, but they do not gesture or touch others.  

5.    Politicians’ body language can help them to win votes in an election.  

6.    Job candidates may rely on nonverbal behaviour such as posing to feel and look more confident.  

7.    Gazing creates a sense of psychological tension as well as confers inaction.  

8.    More eye contact from a boss encourages employees’ participation in group interactions.  

9.    Leaders who adopt a body position of authority, with arms and legs crossed, encourage greater participation in group interactions.  

10.Much of the research on nonverbal communication is too complex to understand.  

11.People expect that their bosses would frown a lot and look angry or dissatisfied.  

12.A recent paper found that male and female employees differ in their attitudes to various forms of non-verbal communication.  

13.Previously studies on body language analysed in-person interactions.

14.Zoom has little opportunity to read other people’s body language.  

15.When workers return to their offices, they will stop using Zoom.  

16.Meaningful eye contact is difficult on Zoom.  

17.The main problem with videoconferencing tools is that people are not attentive and they tend to look at their phones most of the time.  

18.Nodding furiously and gesturing madly is a good way to compensate for the problems of videoconferencing and absence of eye contact.  

19.“Zoom loom” is the term used to describe the situation when people go from gesturing too much to sitting still.  

20.The article suggests that people should not worry too much about body language.  

21.Body language and posture are essential only for leaders who should never turn off their cameras while talking to employees.  

 

VI OVER TO YOU. Think about your experience of using Zoom or similar video conferencing tools and discuss the questions with other students.

A.   What uses of body language did you notice when you looked at other participants during an online meeting or class?

B.   Did you rely on nonverbal communication (for example did you smile or gesture or nod) when you took part in video conferences or online classes?

C.   How does your leader (your teacher or your boss) use body language to encourage contributions and participation?

D.   What recommendations concerning the use of body language would you give to other students or other employees? Do you think it’s a good idea to smile or gesture more? Should they turn their cameras off from time to time to let other participants have some rest?